Oh Come, all ye Faithful

My Buddy and Me

2005-06-18T23:52:00.000-04:00

It was last fall when someone insisted that I look into opera. I had a passing interest in it, as it certainly was cherished by people I knew and loved, as well as those I admired. But this British girl I spent a weekend in Burgandy with was nuts for opera; she was one of those people who saw regular opera tickets as a yearly expense that had to be accounted for. Indeed, these are yearly budget items as the tickets go for 150 dollars, which is a steep fee even for lazy intellectuals.

Lo and behold, the crew of the Metropolitan Opera is bringing itself out and into the parks of all five New York Burroughs, as well as a couple of cities in New Jersey. For ten days, you can put yourself on subways and trains and be delivered to free opera music. If you have no special plans, this could be your salvation to an interesting and heartfelt weekend.

Friday's opera took place in Pehlam Bay Park, way up in the Bronx. It's at the end of a subway line, taking about 35 minutes to get to from central Manhattan. It was the perfect opportunity to see opera and to visit a corner of this city that I would usually pass over.

Well, there's nothing like reading a subway map wrong to make the journey longer. Beceause of this and because of the 2 hours on the phone with customer service people, I was running quite late. When I arrived at the last stop, I was the only one in my subway car. I had to fight back the feeling that I had read the schedule wrong, that the opera was coming there on Saturday. This would not be out of place, as I had missed several events in the last couple of years due to a carelessness with dates and times. Since I had rode the subway to the end of the line, though, I was going to march through the park listening for the sounds of opera. After a few uncertain minutes of marching, I was sure I could see lights and hear a couple strains of music. Then, I finally saw the back of the stage and could see where I needed to go.

At that moment, there was a woman in front of me getting advice from a friendly looking character. I don't want to sound vague, but I couldn't tell the advice giver's sex or sanity until I asked him which way I should go. It turned out that he was a he and was living in the park, picking up trash and taking donations from anyone who cared. A portly young man with a heavy step, he had moved up from Little Rock, Arkansas a week before to settle in this far off part of the Bronx. He said it would be nice to have a few dollars to eat something. He said this a couple of times. Since I had brought a full meal with me, I told him I'd split it with him, and in turn he would show me where the opera was. When we got to the opera he decided to sit there with me and talk about his comings and goings while I passed food and drink to him. Honestly, I didn't know what I felt like more, listening to him or the opera, so I divided my interest and appeared only half-concerned with each one.

It's about reactions versus observations. Normally at a musical event, whether it's a hyped up band, a jazz combo, or an opera, is something I observe and then maybe carry some of the chords with me for days to come. It doesn't often stir the core of my being. Reactions, though, are out of my control and they come and leave me baffled. For instance, several winters ago in Lawrence I was walking to the record store and happened to pass by a homeless guy lying in a doorway with a rough blanket wrapped about him. The thought went through my head that there was hardly difference between me and him, that without family support I would be capable of nothing more than to find places to lie, hoping for sleep. With this came a powerful , frightening feeling that made this idea seem undeniably true. It ruined the rest of my day, ruined the date I had that night, and made everything difficult for a few months. Since then my feelings on this have never changed. Ever since I can remember, I am marked with more instability than stability, my feelings are out-of-control, and I have few social skills that allow me to progress in culturally defined ways. I am not a productive, interactive member of society, but I am always hanging on the edge. I even hang out with a large, successful family, and even there it's by social graces that I'm let in the door.

Opera didn't really interest him, but he was glad that it was for free. He had a lot of concerns for a person so unbound to the usual burdens of life, and he informed me or the park staff about them. He told me about the high security that the opera must've had because the instruments were so expensive, then he turned to a passing parks worker to warn him about a fire someone built. He was keeping active and including everyone else in on it. Then he showed me how he made his money: selling glo-necklaces and little blinking charms. I couldn't very excited about it so I asked him how the sales were and if he had a good pitch. I have always held that the best sales people are loud, funny, and sometimes sing songs, but he eshewed those ways by standing in front of people and steadily stammering out how he had some things that might be of interest to them. With the opera going, though, I didn't feel like talking business. Besides, I was starting to think that I should be selling trinkets on the street. I'm not a successful salesperson, why should I get to be in such a lucrative sales job? Society should pull me back down to the ground floor, imploring anyone and everyone to take a look at what I have in my hand. Seeing as how I wasn't going to buy one of his doo-dads, he carted off, saying he'd be back. The opera was ending, and a chord jumped out of the finale that made hold back some tears. This is a problem with music that I often forget about: sometimes it catches me off guard, upsetting the balance and making my dull broodiness shake with new life. It's the pain that makes you feel in with the suffering of everyone on earth.

When I write in the blog, it's usually things I've kept secret from most people. I feel like everything needs to be expressed, and the only way that seems to work, where people tell me that they understood, is through writing.

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina

2005-06-13T02:19:00.000-04:00

Many winters ago, I was on a plane bound for asia with an intelligent, headstrong friend. I was obsessed with the idea that my destiny lay in my blood as a gentille southern aristocrat, one who must deign effronteries like aggressive networking, smarmy sales tactics, or performance-based salaries only if the family's in real trouble. I didn't think that this was something I would have to overcome because I thought it was inevitable--it was who I was. My lifelong challenge would be to ease myself into being comfortable with this role, no easy task I assure you. With the world spinning around me I would have to content myself with walking around on my southern mossy grounds, stopping every once and a while, and tapping the back of my calves with a stick.

My friend thought all this was ludicrous. Later, though, he would concede and own up to my abilities in relishing a life where little gets done because, as one knows, you can't do much better than that.

Recently, I pulled my southern self up to the telephone at my desk and called my boss. It was time to ask for a raise. I could see the world spinning around me, other people clinching their fists as they were making deals, and I knew I needed some change, some action. To the point, I felt like seeing a cost-of-living increase directly on my check, so I decided to test the waters. It was deemed acceptable. Eventually though, I was informed that I may need to pass muster by securing some deals myself, depending on the stance taken by the as-of-yet nonexistent vice-president. Even I, I who laughed longest at the idea of earning money through so-called honest, hard work, agreed with this. I want to make at least one sale.

2005-04-10T22:08:00.001-04:00

Hoodie with a kite flying, winter with the spring.

2005-04-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

Good old...castle.

2005-04-10T22:07:00.000-04:00

Only two rules on a Central Park Sunday, bring your bats and be happy!

Make your smile sweet to see

2005-04-10T20:37:00.000-04:00

In two weeks I've been sick enough to warrant staying home from work, still sick enough to get comments from my boss about how bad I look, and now hardly sick at all. I'm not the only one who makes NYC look like a toxic enviornment, I met up with another Kansan who's been sick quite a bit as well. Colds, mostly, but in forms that include astonishingly sore throats, fevers, and coughing that wakes you up in the early morning. Is it being around all these people, the cold weather, or just stress? I don't know, but I always felt like I had my ducks in a row in the past, now everything changes when I'm in a city where even basic living has a competitive edge.

These past couple of weeks of being sick have convinced me that there are definite minuses to cubicles. The prescence of six foot walls make it seem okay to cough, then hack, then even spit the product in a coke can. This is, though, a bad idea, as your other three cubicle buddies wish that someone would fire you quickly. Even if you're of perfectly good health, you probably think that you can have some private phone calls, which you may...but they will never be private. I know well that the girl across from me tells her father that she wishes she made more money. She never wanted that to get out, I don't think. On a serious note, though, I have a window into the fascinating life of the former golf caddie, who's my age as well (our cubicle sector is pretty much grouped by age). It's seriously different from my life.

Seeing this Kansan was a treat as we went right across the Hudson to Hoboken, NJ. I never had an idea of Hoboken, because unlike NYC and its outer boroughs, there were no sitcom families in NJ. The Sorpranos are somewhere in Jersey, but I don't have a television or cable, so I'm not paying extra for HBO (one of the few unchanging themes in my life). Hoboken has something about it that says "live here, enjoy yourself!" Apparently the downtown has more restaurants per capita than anywhere else, and it's true, you'd have an easier time finding indan food than a hardware store. One of the aspects of Hoboken that I liked is the same thing I liked about Brooklyn, you get more air space. The buildings don't rush up to the sky giving you only a feeling of being really walled in. Oh, being walled in is a part of NYC, especially if it isn't Greenwich Village, people say. It's cool, that's something that I've said in the past. There's a huge difference, though, between driving or walking around Manhattan and being astonished and waking up to only a morsel of sun because the building across the way blocks it. Then leaving your building and being confronted by the wall of 5 story facades all the way to the end of a long block. And that's not to mention midtown.

There needs to be a New York exchange, a new one for people my age in my grey area of life. So what. I want to live on the outskirts of Orange County, commute 30 minutes 3 times a week to UNC while working somewhere, probably without much enthusiasm. Maybe I want to drive by all the pine trees, let those be the walls blocking my sun. At the same time, on the outskirts of Orange County there's someone waiting to be broken out and freed, in some way, by living here. His life could comprise anything from ultra corporate to used bookstore, but the importance is that so many people he read about did the same thing, sort of, and became successful here. Also, he has some visual memories of NYC, a collusion between 300 movies and 2 visits that makes certain aspects, like unemployment figures or a rather unwelcoming society, very hard to think about. So why shouldn't we switch? No trade backs, of course, but at least on the eight hour drive and the first week afterwards, both people will get what they want.

Spring is lovely here, but the yellow pollen wonderland of North Carolina I'm sure is even more wonderful. The sheer weight of the verdant landscape down there is so full of color that it'll even make children look up from their books on a long car ride. To make life good here, though, I went to the park two days in a row. A child came up to me today to hand me a ball. Apparently children, unlike their parents, nannies, and even dogs, haven't learned to fuzz out all the strangers around them. I also spent some time on the stoop, where I was joined by a Malaysian girl hired at the sushi restaurant next door. Pulling from my grab-bag of foreign languages, I said "Abakaba", to which she asked if I spoke Malay. Well, we all know the answer to that one. But now I have a reason to go next door for sushi. At least to keep someone talking who loves this country so much.

I had to put that title in, thanks to the Neutral Milk Hotel I've been listening to lately. Every title comes from a pop song.

2005-03-31T23:48:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know what this building is? It's near Harvard, it's worth a stare if you're there.

2005-03-31T23:46:00.000-05:00

Here we are at the 11th table of a restaraunt called "10 Tables". My scallops await.

2005-03-31T23:45:00.000-05:00

They couldn't be doing more predictable things on the Charles, could they? It was such a nice day, even I wanted to strap into an "8 manner". (I was nummer 3 in high school)

2005-03-31T23:44:00.000-05:00

Three Kings, Three Amigos, Three Stooges? No, we're even more stereotypical than that. (Too much for Hollywood).

And they'll be rocking in Boston

2005-03-31T20:54:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, Good Friday. If there was ever a day that lost its original meaning, it's Good Friday. It seems to be good to everyone, because the Financial Markets are closed, so that means that everyone is off work, even just a little. I felt good doing my part, precipitating this towards the exit door movement. Everyone was wondering, whispering at the lunch table about asking to get off Friday afternoon. Then I had to break it all off by saying hi to my boss and just asking, "so, would it be okay if I took a bus out of town a bit early on Friday, maybe 3?" Oh, I told him. Then everyone in my 23-28 age bracket followed suit. There are leaders and there are followers, and I think I know what it takes to be a certain kind of leader. It may not be a paid position, but I'm out of town before all ya'll! Peace!

So on this holiest of weekends I ended up with two unholy people that I grew up with. Oh, we had a great time, doing what we used to do as kids: Bowling (candlepin bowling to be specific), drinking...sodas..., listening to music, pointing out how stupid I am. We added in some new activities that as young men we didn't take part in: Fine dining and foreign films. Of course, any dining is a little finer when you're seated across from the young chinese chef. Oh la la we said as we tried to finish one course after another. This young girl was headed over to the same region of France that I spent a weekend in with a young English girl. I told her, "visit the abbey, it's beautiful". Such sage advice can't come from anyone, just from someone who recommends abbies or museums without ever remembering their names.

It was great to walk around Harvard and MIT campuses. For the first time in my life I knew that my place was not among them. I enjoyed the architecture and looked at everyone with a quiet midwesterner's gaze which said "you may be smarter than me, but I can run you over with my truck."

Unreal made real

2005-03-18T22:06:00.000-05:00

It's a vertical city, there's no doubt about it. Sometimes it's nice, when you're on the outskirts or in downtown, to pretend that this huge city is composed of 4 story buildings. Not in Midtown though. What was once a novelty for me when I was a child, to ride 23 floors up, is now just entirely normal. Everyday, I work on the 21st floor.

We were doing a company call over at Atlantic Records. To refresh, Atlantic is a part of the WEA group (Warner Music Group), W is Warner, E is Elektra (the Doors' label), and A is Atlantic. We were actually going over to the Asylum label, which is simply a name owned by Warner. Asylum was David Geffen's label in the 70's for such luminaries as Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, and Jackson Browne. Warner bought it and, in record labels' partial faith in luck over logic, set it up as an urban label. You can catch the Geto Boys' new release out now on Asylum records.

As our elevator went up, I told my superior that I had a friend at Domino records, a label we had talked about before. He couldn't quite remember what the label was, so I reminded him, and at that moment the elevator jolted to a stop. No floor was on the display, just two red x's. He said, "we're going to get off here" but the door didn't open. Before we could say anything else, the elevator started to fall, slowly, then a bit faster. Then it stopped again.

I wasn't sure what to do, and as usual, when I'm unsure I usually do nothing. Well, this time as the elevator descended I bent my knees for the impact. Fortunately, there was no impact, but the elevator was totally unresponsive to our button pushing. My superior especially kept pushing one button that seemed to do nothing. I looked at the same button that I had on my own panel of buttons. It said, "pull for emergency stop". I pulled it and the alarm went off. I remember a girl from long ago wanting to pull that button for less emergency and more explicit passions. Because it was an emergency and an odd situation, I considered my superior for what would be our last minutes with another human being. I figured we could hug or something.

The intercom came on and the maintenance man was hoping that we would be able to tell him what was wrong. He talked to someone who gave us very little news, and after that asked us to depress the pulled button. The elevator went up and let us off one floor sooner than we had selected. From there we took the stairs.

Since the elevator didn't crash and only a few people in the building noticed the alarm, no one really cared about our perilous happening. As events turned in the tri state area, a woman's car was struck by a train not far from a pharmacy where my superior's wife was buying drugs. So he didn't even mention it to his wife. As for myself, I forgot to mention it a few hours later at the German conversation group, but I think that was also because I couldn't remember the German word for elevator.

Elevators have such a place in Midtown Manhattan that I think they are never, ever even looked at as something fun or interesting. Put mirrors in one, it's everyone's powder room. Some even have TV's, like the ones at Atlantic Records. I watched the updates on celebrity and executive trials as our elevator stopped and stayed stopped. But if an elevator takes the plunge, that's it. The plunge begins, though, just as eerily as our little floor drop. Who knows what the next few seconds will bring? It left us with nothing but to think of our last seconds on earth being spent with the guy from work, he we left happily each day to return home to books or to a loving family.

Tonight I almost ran in front of a cab because I was exercising my jaywalk abilities while out for a run. I forgot that it was a two-way street. For the angel believers, there's definitely one tailing me these days, or for the occult, there's an ancient Indian Mahattan God who's trying to kill me.

2005-03-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

Palm Trees

2005-03-13T22:47:00.000-05:00

It's a little cold in Hawaii's 2 month winter!

2005-03-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

This is at the Doris Duke House. You can go on a tour or just walk to the beach (there are no private beaches on Oahu).

2005-03-13T22:45:00.000-05:00

Building of the Week: Japanese Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawaii.

2005-03-13T22:44:00.000-05:00

Heat may have been used in the preparation of tea.

And it couldn't be real

2005-03-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

It's all happened. Another person has seen my apartment, deemed it small. I left New York for a vacation and came back within a week. I watched TV. I found life again difficult to enjoy.

A week spent with my parents showed me how much I had compared to other kids. My parents are both successful in business and so they coached me in everything from how to interview to where to look for jobs, from losing in corporate politics to winning in corporate politics. This was priceless stuff, and as I looked at the desperate titles of career guidance in a Honolulu Border's Books, I really didn't know what I'd do without it.

Hawaii is a sport-lover's paradise. I went after traditional surfing, which I learned how to do pretty fast in calm but steady waves. I only hit one person, and it was only his head, which he probably should have ducked underwater. Surfing was everywhere, even at a museum we could look out at someone surfing a couple hundred feet off shore. On a cold afternoon we watched kiteboarders cruise through choppy waters. I even found out that the old Discovery Channel standby, getting in a cage and having sharks swim around you, is now availible for consumers.

None of us, though, wanted to stay for the rest of our lives. With my sister and I, you'd have to take our word for it. My parents, though, have the wherewithall to move out there, but plans made years ago really mean something to them. They're still going with the life of farmers, a life that's guaranteed to be "in-the-works" for years to come.

Early in the Morning and Late in the Eveningtime

2005-03-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you what's happening in New York. Hopefully it's not buried in snow, hopefully a bunch of robbers haven't figured out how to get into the window of my apartment. I'm writing from Hawaii, for our spring-time family vacation. My mom just came back from the beach, looked at the laundry and asked why no one had collected it yet. Well, clearly we're all on vacation, feeling kind of lazy, and so we all expect her to do it. That's not exactly true. We're pretty P.C., so we don't believe that mom should do all the work. But we do wait for the work to get done, and when mom does it we're all pretty happy.

I met a relative today, he's of my Grandmother's generation but is 18 years younger than her. He moved to Hawaii in the 70's and never came back. I can understand how he did it, he worked nine-to-five's in cultivating all kinds of big gardens and then spent and still spends all his leisure time on several beaches seven days a week. I'll have to post a picture of this guy because he looks real healthy, tanned but not cancer-spotty.

Don't Worry, to all those who worry about me. I'm enjoying this week in Hawaii as much as I enjoyed last week, when I told everyone that I was going to Hawaii. We've only driven the length of Oahu, stopping here and there, and it's taken hours. My parents have reached a point in their lives where they don't see this Hawaii trip as their last. They're happy to do almost everything, even things they've done before.

I know that parts of Hawaii can get crowded, but we haven't seen those crowds yet. Instead, there's been people who were at the North Shore on Sunday to see 25 foot waves who were on the Eastern shore to swim in some finer waves today. People here don't just talk about the weather, they know what the weather, especially the wind, will bring to certain parts of the island. Then they follow the conditions to follow their own pleasures. My great-uncle twice removed (at that point we would call him a distant cousin) has been doing it for over twenty years.

Roll Over Beethoven!

2005-03-03T19:49:00.000-05:00

Out of a city of 15 million, I should expect to get upstaged in a big way any time I try to do anything. Here it is:

newyorkintern.blogspot.com

Don't let the straightforward web address fool you. This guy is in the jokes telling business, so you don't get the straight scoop. He works for the Daily Show, and in reading his jokes, it makes me think, "ah yes, that's what it's like if you're actually funny."

A little bright spot showed up in my week when a little senorita gave me a call on Monday. Unfortunately, she's leaving in a week, but this could still have some real long-term benefits. It all revolves around her mattress, something I'd like to buy from her. It's more expensive than my first car and looks like it took only a bit of wear in its year of usage. I think my back would thank me for years if I bought it.

We met in German class (oh, before I let you assume it too long, she has a boyfriend and we've been platonic) and it turns out that her boyfriend is a German from some town, one of the hundreds that I've never been to. They'll both be at her little going away party tonight, to which I'll be going. Who knows, maybe I'll regain my ability to speak a little German? I've found that it goes well, or decently, as long as people don't give me a strained look that says, "give us a phrase, anything that we can use to understand you."

Manhattan life is progressing faster than I'd thought. Before I even have a real job, I've got real stress, which focused itself on the left side of my back. Yesterday I could take no more of this and I called my sports club for a massage. The expensive massage left me weary and today it still hurts, something that the masseuse assured me would happen. This is really standing in the way of my rigorous exercise program, which goes 6 days a week unless I'm a little sick or tired. Then I cut it down to no days a week.

My creativity and attraction to a certain class of intellectual led me to think that the banking industry was the only place for me. Well, I've heard nothing but warning or astonishment from those who know me, so today I thought about the job, as I understand it, of coffee importer. It's a beverage I like, one that I can discriminate between the awful and the tolerable. I've spent a little time in Central America and in Africa. I can sleep at night while people toil away for poor wages. I can speak Spanish and French, and in instances where my language abilities falter, I can pretend to speak them instead. I can even go to a port and watch containers lifted onto trucks, thereby confirming the actual importation of the coffee.

I must say, for those of you like me, with some French ability (or even Italian might work), the job of wine merchant is a booming trade in New York. I can't do it because I don't drink, but there are those of you stuck in boring jobs who could really do a number here and in France. According to the wife of someone in my French Class (a country girl from Lainguedoc), the first year was hell, but now her wines are at Tavern on the Green, the overpriced Central Park eatery, among other places. Life probably doesn't get better than describing beverages to people.

Sorry my German or Spanish friends. I don't think that peddling dry sherry or Riesling will buy your daily bread.

2005-02-27T21:12:00.000-05:00

Subway drummers. Friendly duo.

2005-02-27T21:11:00.000-05:00

This guy was trying to play the violin for everyone, but now he just insists that everyone who gave him a dollar try to play it instead.

2005-02-27T21:10:00.000-05:00

This guys is not sprinting, but rather about to start hardcore rapping over his laptop-made music. This was at Tonic, on the Lower East Side.

2005-02-27T21:08:00.000-05:00

Building of the Week: The former New York Cancer Hospital. It ceased to function as a hospital a few decades ago and it just sat there. Now it's being divided up into condos. Oh, how I envy its future tenants!

2005-02-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

Subway Mosaic

Feel Good Hit of the Winter

2005-02-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

I don't want to tell anyone that I feel guilty when I just go to work and go to the gym. Even though i'm in a city where people say "wow" when I call them, I turn away from the big events more and more and just throw my life to fate, which means that I do the same thing every day and evening, just waiting for a suicidal dog to hit me from the 14th floor of a classic apartment building. Even while I wait for my message from above, though, I always feel like I have to take advantage of New York's live entertainment, no less than 2 times a week.

The weekends, though, demand a bit more action in life. At least one day out of the week I need to get rid of a little pile of one-liners, observations, self-deprecations, and news that one could only get by reading the paper. I've even found some people polite enough to stand there and wait for me to finish unloading this. Truthfully, we have real conversations and real laughs. But I can't help but notice the lightness in my heels after having battled against bar music and rock concerts alike to keep the conversation starters going.

It helps, in finding activities outside of the category of instant fun (wine, women, and people who say, "you're funny!"), to look for free activities. So, at the Austrian Cultural Forum this week I saw some Mahler songs for free. They'll keep the program going and, in spite of my dateless status, I'll keep going to their program.

Saturday, after the weekly rounds of shopping and laundry, was anything and everything on music. There was a silly, terrible fiddlest in the first train station; in the next station and then on the train itself were drummers. In the bars full of pretty women I sought out one guy with wild pierced ears and we talked about music all night until we made it to a concert where I met someone from the radio station in Kansas. It turns out that my old Kansas friend was not the only one of us in New York: I then met another Kansan who, at his best, engineered albums and produced his own music. Next week, a Kansan comes up to work at a major-indie label, and another is back in Kansas saving money to come back here and continue his music career. Still another Kansan in the New York area works at a hip-hop magazine and manages bands. I'm no longer worried about New York's future: enough Kansans will make this place tolerable and genius filled, helping these poor New Yorkers out of their general rut.

2005-02-24T22:50:00.000-05:00

A fine cathedral, wouldn't you say? On Fifth Avenue, across from the Atlas statue, is St. Patricks.

2005-02-24T22:45:00.000-05:00

New York has nothing to do with modesty. Never has, either.

2005-02-20T17:04:00.001-05:00

Hippos!

2005-02-20T17:04:00.000-05:00

The Brooklyn Brewery is open to the public every Friday, I think, with live music.

2005-02-20T17:03:00.000-05:00

The Harlem Meer (NE corner of Central Park)

2005-02-20T17:02:00.000-05:00

Christo's "Saffron" vs. standard construction orange. Same? Different? Compare the construction pole with Christo's pole in the background.

2005-02-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

Building of the Week: The Bereford. It's a monster that takes over Central Park West north of the Natural History Museum.

This is not a love song

2005-02-20T16:29:00.000-05:00

With more Cincinnati people coming into town for the weekend, I went straight to Brooklyn to see them, one of whom I met in France. Friday night was another Brooklyn night of many bars in which some, like the Brooklyn Brewery, were impressive.

Saturday had its obligatory humilation, as certain forces of nature were at work to taint this glorious off-work day. Standing in front of the ATM, I realized that I couldn't remember my PIN code. I tried many, many combinations, but sometime between last weekend and this weekend I've forgotten it. The forty dollars that I still have I hold onto dearly because New York City, being as expensive as it is, is still very much a credit card unfriendly place to be. Cabs and delis, the two mainstays of living here, are now off-limits. In places where credit cards can be used, most shop owners expect a minimum purchase which ends up being more than I intend to pay. For a week I'll be eating out of the grocery store and resisting the temptation of a late-night cab, which means I'll be living like an animal.

Check up from the Neck up

2005-02-18T12:36:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like starting a week out with Valentine's Day, which sunk the first exciting day of the week into the mediocrity of a tiresome holiday. My Valentine's highlight ended up being conversation about a sandwich I was eating. Well, at least that's how the conversation started. A woman, clocking in at about 65 years of age, leaned over to me and asked what kind of sandwich I was eating. She caught me by surprise and I didn't quite know what to tell her as this was an Au Bon Pain chicken sandwich. There were some special sandwich features, like chili paste and roasted red peppers, that couldn't be left out of the description. It had an overall visual appeal that would justify an old lady asking me what kind of sandwich I was eating.

I spent a minute or two explaining the how and what of the sandwich, hoping that I had sufficiently described what the Au Bon Pain headquarters had conceived to win the gourmet quick meal market. It so happened, though, that I could have answered her question by saying "there's meat in there. It's a sandwich with meat in it, is what it is," because she wasn't really interested in my sandwich. See, after I stopped talking about the sandwich, she started complementing my hair. Her tactics, from the days of courtship no doubt, were unfamiliar to me, so I couldn't smell her true motives beneath her sandwich commentary. I myself don't come onto people with a meaningless entree. Instead, my preferred approach is to stand up in front of several girls at once and talk to them about basic math for 45 minutes a few times a week. Sometimes I use a chalkboard. Of course, I offer additional help after class.

I took the first exit I could politely find out of the conversation and returned to reading my paper. Her flattery was not unpleasant, but she's much closer to death than I am so I lacked the hormonal energy to keep talking in such a manner. I appreciated the effort, though, and promised myself to remember her little trick, which probably came from an old lady-sized bag of tricks, for picking up on someone in a restaurant. I wish I could find a better trick, though, that doesn't make me look like a broke fatso. The only other thing I can think of is complementing someone's footwear, which probably seems odd. Sadly, I think my lack of creativity in this area has kept my single status safetly guarded for months now.

Yesterday was much more exciting than the other three days. I got ready to apply for a new job within the company and I had dinner with a guy I met while hiking in the Sierras. It goes, though, that these little excitements reveal that the other three days were pretty boring.

The job announcement came over the general company email. I, who am stuck in a real readheaded stepchild of an internship, swiftly responded within 24 hours of its posting. I am not necessarily qualified for this job but I am already on the inside. The position was listed for New York so I could stay in my comfortable studio not far from the newly Christoed Central Park.

Today, in returning from the restroom, I had a little enlightenment. Every return trip from the restroom I would see a nametag on an office door and ignore it each time. Well, today I recognized that the office belongs to none other than to whom I'm applying. Now I'm caught. This person has likely walked by my cubicle numerous times to use the printer and has, by fault of curiosity, looked upon me doing any number of things that hardly resemble work. This is not my fault. I work when people give me work to do and have even stooped to asking four bosses and one guy in Canada to make use of me in any officelike way possible. But, because they're not interested in letting me pull up a chair to their table, they give me a few tasks a week that usually take just a few hours to resolve. Consequently, I look like a slacker and my resume, with all its international trimmings, will likely head for the Windows Recycle Bin. It has been several hours since I sent my resume a whole thirty feet away and I have yet to hear about any interview, talk, or even a Re: Hi, my name is Wells Crandall and I'm writing in response to the job announcement.

The dinner last night was, for someone who often eats while walking or leaning over the kitchen sink, a power-dinner indeed. Hosted at the Carnegie Deli, where one is not allowed, under stipulation of the restaurant, to eat for less than 12.50, me and Mr Pete Banglesdorf enjoyed authentic and well-cooked New York foods. I had a sandwich that cost twenty dollars and was built impossibly high. Pete had a knish, which is some sort of dinner pastry, and a giant piece of apple pie. We talked about our loved ones and what we're doing currently, and it turned out that we're both apparently happy and cancer-free. After having covered that, though, we got into the world of banking and finance, an area of work that I'm going to apply for. Pete broke down the different areas and jobs that once faces in this varied field. We also covered Pete's professional life, which is nothing short of a success. Pete said that he would help me if he could by arranging some interviews at a few places. It was, like the meal he bought me, extremely generous, and I won't forget it after I've been turned down everywhere else. I have to remember, though, that I took this internship on the sole premise that it was offered to me. In other words, there was nothing in my life calling me to work in commercial radio save a fear that my poor looking resume wouldn't get me a better job anywhere else. In order to feel less disappointed about the next job, I'm going to see what I can find for myself.

2005-02-14T00:46:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Christo's Central Park. He calls this orange Saffron. I say, forget the trademark name, the color of the poles is enough reason to post thousands of them in repetition. It made my Friday.

2005-02-14T00:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday night at the hop.

2005-02-14T00:17:00.000-05:00

This wheel, at random, tells you to do something sexual. The girls in the act of pondering are lawyers.

2005-02-14T00:13:00.000-05:00

Any takers?

2005-02-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

Just one week at the gym. Guaranteed results.

2005-02-14T00:08:00.000-05:00

Building of the week: Carnegie Hall. It's not something I'm used to seeing in the daytime because most shows are at night.

I saw my head laughing

2005-02-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

Two girls just stopped me as I was walking home. They wanted to know where the burrito place was, as there is only one in my neighborhood. I went ahead and told them exactly where they could find it and then regretted that, while I knew where it was and how to get there, I didn't really know the address. But girls asking me directions inspires a certain 'man of the city' in me. Just ask, I know!

This weekend brought sunshine onto New York to let us all enjoy, or at least see, Christo's piece in Central Park. Lot of praise all around with good criticism coming scarce. I took a picture of the gates before his helpers took down the curtains because I enjoyed the color of the poles without the curtains.

More sunshine came in the human form of my third oldest girl cousin. She came with her boyfriend to go to a party hosted in the name of defaming Valentine's Day. Naturally, I was invited along. In fact, in order to make this most un valentine weekend special, we all went to a charming italian restaurant first. Our company was mixed, several professionals, a British man working for the BBC, a high school student, and myself. We even had one woman, the mother of the high schooler, who allowed herself to get a little antagonistic in the polite company of me and my cousin. We had been talking about the way New Yorkers, or maybe all North Easterners, pronounce Oregon. They pronounce it like the spice, oregano. So, she makes her Superman leap of a segue to non New Yorkers who try out their fake New York accents on her. Oh, that just makes her mad, she told us while using bad words like fuck. Her excitement on this somewhat bland practice of non New Yorkers let us all know that her pride and, above that, her unailing snobbishness established her as a native of this city.

What she didn't touch on, and what I was wondering, was how she would feel if we made fun of her own particular New York accent. New York is too big to only have one accent, and the rich people, who must feel different from everyone in more ways than just money, have a particular accent that rings like crystal glass in blue blood company. Sadly for them, the hallmark example of this accent is none other than Robin Leach, the host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, who takes the accent so far that some people might think he's an idiot. Indeed she had this accent, cultivated a bit south of here on Long Island. It was pretty low key, though, thanks to her setting up residence in Overland Park, Kansas many years ago. Maybe her special je ne sais quoi passes well with those sons of the soil who made it bigtime.

The party was an all black affair, like a funeral. People were drinking alot and looking for someone to kiss all over and maybe have sex with. Unlike a funeral, nobody was dead and people were wearing sex clothes.

I was completely scandalised by my cousin, former House of Representatives page to Newt Gingrich, as her skirt wasn't quite covering her knees. Mine wasn't either, we were both bad but there's no pictures, save for these few.

Today I chased off the Sunday blues by meeting someone through the grace of internet dating. We talked and had a good time of it by sitting at the fountain in the park, where people showed the world how they dress their dogs, their children, and themselves. I finally found someone who listened to my rant against fur, the end of innovation in fashion. It's the few obtrusive features of this city, like the copious fur worn by so many women, like the transportation system that runs like a broken clock, that I have to keep trying to accept in order to really like this place.

2005-02-10T22:54:00.001-05:00

This is my office way up on the 21st floor. Isn't it amazing, the views you get from the 21st floor?

2005-02-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

This is the school library where I go to read to NYC children. They make alot of stupid mistakes and it's clear to me now that I can read better than they can.

if I'm supposed to do something different, someone better tell me quick!

2005-02-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

It was six summers ago that I sat in the fourth floor of one of Kansas' few highrise buildings waiting for nothing to do and nothing to be done. I was hired to enter data into computers. Out of the entire keyboard, we used eleven buttons. I listened to women talk about their homes with an emphasis on their driveways, because that's where they parked their cars to drive their kids to various activities. My boss spent his days seriously looking at websites about hunting dogs. At first, I did come to work to put in an honest eight hours of data entry. But in time the work was finished and we, as workers, got to experience firsthand a state budget surplus. There were sixteen temp employees like me and not a thing to do except clock in to recieve state money. I read several books that my mom had given me in the past, slept on the job, took two hour lunch breaks, and then quit this supposed luxury of a job to make fifty cents more on the hour gardening. At this point in my life, I exposed the busy bee side of myself. If you wanted to insult me, you could call me a drone.

My job now has me doing little. Everyone went to LA this week and they left me in the office. Sometimes someone calls in with a technical problem and it's my job to be cordial over the phone and then to call the technical support and get the problem resolved.

Why couldn't they just call the technical support themselves, you ask.

I am a replacement salesperson this week, that's the reason. This office is just salespeople who agree on a price with a client (as much as they can get) and then continue to be the customer service person for the length of the contract. It's no small feat, because the system is not very user-friendly and has enough bugs to merit a Microsoft logo. Also, these record company types want all kinds of information that in some way shows how great a job they did.

At the end of this week, I'll know the product and what customers want to use with it. This will enable me to sell it to new customers and thus get a real job. Unlike Carnegie, who was a hard worker, I may succeed in getting a job by sitting around and not making too much noise or flatulence.

My cubical foursome consists of other kids my age. They talk about TV, restaurants, their universities and their drinking societies, and anything where the guy across from me can start going, "I know, oh yeah, I know. And let me tell you..." Two of them form the young avant-garde who takes care of Rush Limbaugh and his team's travelling schedule, clearing the way as that helplessly honest man pounds through radio interviews with more sound effects than could be found In Another Galaxy Far, Far Away... They may progress to become talk-radio salespeople themselves. The young man across from me, a guy who seems to know what I or anyone needs to do in any given situation, is currently crumpling up papers and doodling around on his PC. He and the shockingly attractive sales rep from Winston-Salem get to go to California next week for a sales conference. Are you going? they asked. No, no, I work with the music tracking service, not talk radio, I said. As if I would have been flown out to LA for anything.

Who cares, I hear that LA smells anyways and that the traffic is awful.

Like every job I've had, the other employees will be here longer than I will. No threat of sustained unemployment or even worse, unemployability, has convinced me to weather out a job and learn how to be a real team-player. In addition, no prospect of a better job or higher pay has ever seemed that attractive to me. The raises that jobs have proposed me in the past would seem appealing to someone who runs over to the corner of a closet because they saw several pennies there. That thirty cent raise adds up, you say? Maybe enough to cover a quarter of my Fantasy Deficit which already has me buying myself into fashion, a car, a nice apartment, and broadway plays.

As I've been a little ill this week, I have had no problem living the quiet life. In the hope that I could connect my illness to the 9 hours I've spent on dating websites, I put this sentence in between the next sentence and the sentence previous to it. So, against my stated position of remaining off dating websites for five years, I emerged on the internet as a new, self-described me.

The first site is not really my fault. I was reading the German national paper, Die Welt, when I saw the words "Partner search" in German. Now, my German may not be able to explain how I want my steak cooked, or for what reasons I have for studying German, but I saw that word and clicked on it. Instead of being able to peruse 20 or so faces before the service would cut me off to ask for money, like it's done in the US, they instantly invited me to go a little deeper into the website to take a test. That test took three hours. There was Gestalt testing, situational reaction testing, it was very thorough. I was wasted by the time I finished it, but when I saw that me and number 66 from Switzerland were a good match, I felt welcome to my new life in their popular democracy. Needless to say, in order to get more than an id number and a vague description, I had to start shelling out money. And so my interest dropped accordingly. I feel bad for those German-speaking women. They're probably not looking for a post-Clintonic American to invade their email boxes. I'll spare them by refusing to pay the site's high fees.

Later this week a friend of mine referred me to www.okcupid.com, a free site. This prevented me from backing out, as it was free. So I went whole hog, and now I'm on the site. The pictures of the girls who live near me confirm my haunting realization: New York has alot of ugly women. There's a reason why the Beach Boys sang about a "midwest farmer's daughter" and not a "landlord's precious dahling", the Beach Boys weren't going anywhere near here to include her in their spectrum of California Girls.

This weekend will see the arrival of relatives and friends, as will the week after that, and the week after that. Who knows, you'd better check the website for some pictures, they could be good!

2005-02-06T22:03:00.000-05:00

Building of the Week: The San Remo. These apartments date back to 1930, are thirty stories high, and they dominate the skyline of the west side of Central Park until the El Dorado at 90th street.

2005-02-06T21:56:00.000-05:00

The San Remo later in the afternoon.

2005-02-06T21:52:00.001-05:00

Pat, a young Graphic Designer, singing "Panic" by the Smiths.

2005-02-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

Jared, a young Graphic Designer, singing "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins.

2005-02-06T21:49:00.000-05:00

Myself singing "Wishing (I Had a Photograph of You)" by A Flock of Seagulls

People live, eat, and congregate in Brooklyn while I live and eat in Manhattan.

2005-02-06T19:08:00.000-05:00

Twice in the past four days I've taken the trains to Brooklyn to spend time with people. The buildings are smaller, there's more open space, and there's a high concentration of people my age. The neighborhood I ended up in was called Williamsburg, it's not very picturesque but it's more affordable than my neighborhood in Manhattan. It's the young people you run into time and again down there, a community where there may not be enough bars to contain them.

Normally I would only go to Brooklyn to see a particular building that I read about in my New York architecture book or to go to an event of some sort. But I like to spend time with people, and after having recently gotten in touch with a guy I had met one evening in France, another American, we agreed to meet at a Karaoke bar on Thursday. When I arrived, I was worried that I wouldn't recognize him or that he wouldn't recognize me, being that we spent only one evening together several months ago on the public grass in the picturesque town of Annecy. Earlier, over the phone, he had told me to meet him in the back room of the bar, where he and his friends and co-workers would be sitting. I walked into the bar and headed to the back and saw seven guys and two girls sitting on an L-shaped bench. I looked at them all and said, "Jared?".

I quickly worried that my greek sailor's hat was preventing Jared from positively identifying me. So I rushed to take off my hat and said, "Jared?" again.

I wasn't too impressed that out of nine people in front of me I had failed to meet the one person I came to meet. But, like any rational being, I proceeded away from them and straight to the bar and ordered a Coke. The bartender said that I could have refills "no problems." While drinking my drink I watched the NBA on television, remembering that Shaq had moved back to Miami. It seemed like a good move, in 13 or so years he has come from Orlando to be in Miami. Of course, I hadn't come to the bar to watch NBA programs, I had come to meet someone, and so I looked at the clock from time to time and waited until 10:30, which was the point I would use my cell phone to call Jared and find out where he was.

10:30 came and not a minute later was I on the phone outside, only to find out, as it so often happens, that my party was also inside the bar, answering my cell phone call. These phones have saved the human race from the awkward detectivelike duty of leaning into every table at a bar and checking each face for the suspect, informant, or other detective. This unpleasant activity takes some heart, as you end up interrupting conversations and earning disapproving looks from girls.

After we met face to face, Jared introduced me to other University of Cincinnati students in the field of Graphic Design. We talked about movies and music and I was glad to hear about some exciting new movies and albums that I might enjoy in the near future. I myself spent some time explaining my job to people. It was difficult for two reasons, being that the company I work for sells music industry-specific information and that I have hardly any stake in the company whatsoever, as I am an intern who comes to work but is rarely given any work to do. What's more, the second problem makes one question unnecessarily difficult to answer: "What do you do there?"

But the business of non-sports enthused men, that of albums, travel, girls, jobs, politics, and movies, came to a tidy end because everyone had arrived at the Karaoke bar wanting to sing at least once. We all sang 80's hits. I don't know if we would have been willing or even interested in singing anything else. Jared's music made me enjoy Phil Collins again, as Phil Collins can be easily forgotten if you choose certain radio stations over others. I should note, too, that Pat tried to sing exactly like his singer of choice, a daring move only attempted by three other people in the bar, all women who had had lots of experience singing in the past.

Friday should have been a terrible day because of my late night. Instead, it was an interesting day because I tagged along with someone from work to the offices of Atlantic Records. They own a floor or two in a midtown office building not far from where I work. Perhaps I should remind you all that Atlantic's big sellers were Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Genesis, Led Zepplin and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The last band was signed by David Geffen, who eventually made his own label which, twenty years later, signed Nirvana, who still charts number three in weekly spins on Alternative stations. Led Zepplin, as it stands, still fills the company's coffers while it continues to try and sign the next Britney, Coldplay, Limp Bizkit, or Jay-Z. Led Zepplin, in order to make some money of its own, started to sign acts on their own label in the mid seventies, such as Bad Company. That label, called Swan Song, no longer exists.

In talking to someone working there I found out some unsurprising information, that the record industry is about who you know, it's competitive, and there is a glut of older, more experienced, and well-connected people willing to take jobs for low pay. This is not very discouraging, though, because on Monday I met two of my father's old friends, one of whom works in what could be called investment banking. His industry, which has no free concert tickets, artist signings, or platinum records, is also very competitive. Restaurants are competitive too, I spent years working in them and never earned anyone's confidence. It's clear as crystal that luck, contacts, a sane and healthy appearance, and excellent timing with logical speech are vital in securing a job in the record industry, while experience or a neat resume will not catch anyone's eye. In fact, when I mentioned resumes to the Atlantic promotions rep I was talking to, he looked off to the side for a couple of seconds, laughed, and then launched into his own life story. One which wouldn't even look that bad on a resume.

After an uneventful Friday comes Saturday, and Saturday I spent an evening with Jared and his company which, as a nice surprise, included two girls. I was impressed that Jared, a twenty year old, could convince two attractive girls older than he to risk their Saturday night amusement with him and his company. It is probably because he lives without being secretive, which at least assures the girls that he won't bring out any unfortunate surprises on them.

We went to a gallery opening in Chinatown. Little was said about the art, save one piece out of the sixteen, which people said they liked. A couple of people emphasized the word liked. Praise, though, was given to the gallery, and many of us agreed that if it were an apartment, it would be a great place to live. The artist was present. No one in our group of people talked to him. I could only think of asking him what kind of white paint he used, which was durable enough for him to scribble on with graphite. There's probably lots of paints that would work in that situation.

During the evening we talked about roommates, unfortunate happenings, and restaurants in New York and Cincinnati because I found myself again in the thick of both present and former University of Cincinnati Graphic Design students. Eventually we went back to Brooklyn. Later that night, I returned home to Manhattan.

Today, among other things, I spent time regretting my apartment in Manhattan. While it's only twenty minutes from the door of my Brownstone to the 21st floor where I work, I am spending 47 dollars a day for rent, electricity, and the initial broker's fee I paid to get the apartment. Brooklyn's calling me, and if New York ends up being where I work, study, and amuse myself, I may have to turn my back on the sensible good looks of the Upper West Side and find an apartment in Brooklyn's Williamsburg or Clinton Hill like everyone else.

When settling in to live somewhere, it seems more truth than truism that it's the people that make the city. If that's so, then Brooklyn must be fascinating. To be generous in generality, there's alot of young professionals there. Whatever they do, they do it with interest and concern, because otherwise someone else who is more invested in his work will take the loafer's job. In talking to total strangers and people you know, you pick up a feeling that these youth are thinking at times about the arts and other fields. Opinions and musings are given out, but also people want to hear what you have to say, too. At that point you can't think about being a visitor or tourist or someone new to the area because you're just yourself out loud, which sounds good going along with a whole bar doing the same.

2005-02-04T01:31:00.000-05:00

New York area: Wall Street

2005-02-04T01:26:00.000-05:00

New York neighborhood: Little Italy

2005-02-04T01:22:00.000-05:00

New Orleans neighborhood: French Quarter

2005-02-04T01:21:00.000-05:00

New York neighborhood: Spanish Harlem

2005-02-04T01:20:00.000-05:00

New York Event: Oktoberfest

2005-02-04T00:11:00.000-05:00

This is where I used to work, up until a week ago. The only thing that has changed about my job is my office. It was flashy to work here, but I got over it. Besides the Music Hall, it's just offices.

It would be done, and it was done

2005-02-03T22:11:00.000-05:00

I've succeeded in making my life exciting on paper, which goes to say that if I look at a long list of the things I've done in the past 5 days, I lose my train of thought for a while until I suddenly realize that I forgot to put something else on the list. Faced with the life in New York which has a bedrock foundation in a 9 to 6 job and a studio apartment, I explored all the opportunities that I could potentially find in a "What do I do with my life now?" advice column. Unlike in the past, where friends, dating, and video rentals prevented me from trying any of these well-thought-out ideas, I now have little to stop me from signing myself up, save a budding collection of books that will never be a decent substitute for real people.

Classes that you pay for always get me a little excited because I get to choose the class and maybe, like a few times in the past, I luck out with a fantastic group of students and an uncompromisingly thorough professor. I signed up for a French class at the Alliance Française that meets every Monday night. This means I have the small priviledge of leaving work early. They don't care. They've been having trouble finding things for me to do.

My class pretty much consists of people my parents' age and older. Initially, I saw my dating prospects whither. Then, after mildly considering atraditional romance, I scorned even the bare notion that I would come to class thinking of dating in any form. At the very least, though, I was in a group of people who, because of their ages, couldn't help but to have lives vividly formed through experience. A wine merchant married to a french woman, a few fur-coat wearing ladies with calf-high suede boots, a dark-skinned man who smiles and shakes his head when we bring up the difficult Sunnis, and a half-deaf retired international banker. The French accents are terrible, and I wish that we had a phonetics teacher on hand to help everyone move their mouth and tongue in the proper French way.

This class is worth all the three hundred dollars I paid because there is a real French person teaching the class, which is the policy of the Alliance Française. She gives us expressions that end up being left out of textbooks and teachers' manuals. Also, she can immediately draw a line between common spoken French and written French, something that textbooks have a hard time doing. I think about this and I get excited because when I come back to France I'll have another list of seemingly spontaneous expressions to insert here and there. I won't be surprised, though, if I again get the look from various French people that says, "oh, look at you, you're speaking French."

One of the most important things you can do to learn a foreign language is to converse in it, or at least to try. The Alliance Française offers chat groups, but they have admission fees which turned me off. So I used my handy-dandy Internet Search engine to find the meetup.com system of finding groups which cater to your specific interest. It turned out that the French conversation group was meeting on Tuesday, the day after my French class. Why not, I said? Well, I'll tell you why not, because if I didn't go I would have been hard on myself for chickening out, even if I didn't feel like going just because I like to have some time to myself.

The poor French conversation group. It had so many problems to cope with. As I realized when I looked on their member list and clicked on the individual member descriptions, the group had no French girls. It turned out that there were not only no French girls, but only one French man who had arrived at our conversation group with a completely unacceptable motivation: he was there to practice his English. Because of this I ended up talking to other Americans who were on the same speaking level, more or less, as I was. The whole event was always a bit awkward, as once you sat in a seating section, of which there were three, it seemed unnatural to get up and move to another. After all, no one knew anybody, so why would you go to the other group? Is it because you came not to speak French but rather to try and find a date? My good conscience allowed me to move once so that I ended up next to a nice looking but very awkward female architect, a New York film industry grunt, and a classically tense gay black man. The men really liked Paris and so we talked about the things that Paris had: metros, restaurants, streets, apartments, Chinese. I told them about the time I was attacked in Paris, which then spurred the conversation to New York. We talked about the things that New York had, at which point I had to get some critical information from these lifetime New Yorkers, like whether or not there were other nice parks besides Central Park to visit in the five boroughs. Riverside Park is nice, they said, and in Brooklyn, they said that Prospect Park is nice.

This was not a difficult conversation to tear myself away from. I left with one of my dependable but permissible excuses: I had to go shopping for food.

This was wise enough, because the next morning saw me going over to an Elementary School to volunteer at a program which lets children into the school library early so that they can read before school starts. Parents drop off their kids so that they can get to work on time, the kids become more literate, it's a win-win situation. The work is not so hard, you sit down in a chair that is not big enough for adults and the children find you with a book they want to read or have read to them. We as volunteers must discriminate on reading to children on the basis that if they are 7 or older they should be reading, with some help, by themselves. The youngest children, though, can still bask in the warm sun that is illiteracy while an adult reads to them.

All was well until the child that chose me succeeded in finding a book, one book out of thousands of books, that made noise. We read the book and she flipped the pages pretty fast, like she was looking for a phone number in the yellow pages. Then, at the end, she pushed the red button marked "push this" and this odd melody that had no harmony came out loudly. The book was trying to make sounds which resemble the type of Christmas songs that farm animals themselves would write. In some ways, it worked, because the children really liked the little piece of song, even though it sounded like a cow was licking a synthesizer. In other ways, it wasn't so important what the book played because the children enjoy pushing a button that plays sounds. They could have recorded a car alarm and put it in the book. It would have been a hit.

Went to work after this. Nothing doing there, so after reading everything that interested me, including Ward Churchill's inflammatory rant from 3 years ago which prevented his coming to little Hamilton College this week, I left for the bimonthly German meeting located in one of the few, if not the only, authentic German restaurant in Manhattan.

I expected the people to be old and they were, which was fine. After all, I can be pretty popular with old people because last year I lived an interesting life. Unfortunately, I found that, unlike French, I couldn't actually speak German. Not to any success worth tabulating. Since I had spent time in Berlin last winter speaking some German to friends, I figured that I had some sense of the language. I was not bummed out, though, because I've learned how to roll on despite communication failure. In Chile, France, and Senegal I had many instances and even days of language failure. The best thing to do is to realize what is most critical to successful communication, and then to go for it. For me and German, it's to have lessons with a Native German speaker, which will allow my understanding to be shaped on the most common ways to express oneself.

In the past, I didn't think that it was imperative to use native speakers in order to learn a language. Now I am convinced, and I advise myself and others to start in the beginning with native speakers and to keep working with native speakers when possible. They can help to focus the learning process. Also, they can help with developing a correct accent, which, while it sounds trivial, is essential to clear communication, which is what we're working so hard for to learn a foreign language in the first place!

Tonight or tomorrow I go to Brooklyn to meet someone I had last seen in France. He's from Cincinnati. Pictures to follow this weekend, stay tuned.

2005-01-29T23:24:00.000-05:00

This is the picture that I was going to use for an Internet Personals website, but then I remembered that you have to PAY to put your picture on the website, and at that point I decided to hold off on Internet Personals for another 5 years of my life.

2005-01-29T22:55:00.000-05:00

I was really happy to meet the African Klu Klux Klan at my little village in Senegal. I was feeling so alone, I really needed to reach out to someone and it was like a whole new day to be with my brethren out there, you know, in Africa

Wells in New York: Show Me The Money!

2005-01-29T22:09:00.000-05:00

I stopped emailing everyone while I was in Africa because I was getting tired of talking about myself. Whether or not you all were tired of me was not my concern. Sometimes I need to stop expressing myself for a few weeks to see if, after a little time, I can be capable of saying something different or thinking new thoughts.

Some people have emailed me, two people I should say, about whether or not I would continue to write everyone emails now that I am living in New York City on the Upper West Side. This is my way of saying, yes, I will write everyone, but no more intrusive emails. You can read updates which I will promise to be posted twice a week: once before Sunday night and once before Thursday night. Any more than that is pure indulgence and will result in complaining about Supermarket lines, ridiculous customers at the Post Office who make everything complicated, the long unnecessary wait for utilities companies to come to your apartment, and so forth. If you care about those things, that's fine, but I don't, and if I can stop my fingers from typing them, I will.

Let me update everyone about the "little situation" we have here. While I was in France my mom asked a favor from a friend that I be given an internship in a large radio corporation called Clear Channel Communications. My Mom's friend's son is the head of Premiere Radio Networks, one of the many companies that Clear Channel has bought. I could work in New York City or LA. I chose New York City for reasons that I will only confess to you privately and only if I'm in a good mood.

Now I work a nine-to-six in Midtown Manhattan (right near Rockefeller Center) and things are going allright. I started this internship two weeks ago, but last week I had the golden opportunity to restart my job in a new building. A new building for me, that is, about five blocks north. This was a good change in some ways, and in other ways it didn't really matter at all.

This blog will allow me to answer questions to all of you at once. This is not so nice and personal, but these answers are not the ones I feel like repeating 15 times to 15 different cell phones. If you dare to call, we could talk about your life, which I assure you is just as exciting as mine. I think it is a popular illusion that life in New York City is a guaranteed bringer of excitement.

Do you know anyone in New York?

No.

Really?

Well, there should be two people from KJHK, my college radio station, living in Brooklyn. But I have no idea where they are. And I know some of my father's friends. In fact, I stayed with two of them for the first week I was here.

Do you live alone? How much does it cost?

I live in a studio which costs 1250 a month, which doesn't include the Broker's fee I paid. It also doesn't include electricity.

Do you like it there [In New York]?

Yes and no. I'm already thinking of leaving. Why people love this city so much is a mystery to me. Then again, if I was hanging out with fashion moguls or real estate tycoons I might love New York too.

As the weeks go on I'll talk about everything. No big showy stuff, no over-the-top happenings that you could base song lyrics on. It'll just be me, the person who can't stand being in one place for too long, who is already looking to find other job opportunities before the first paycheck. And this time, there'll be pictures. I will also include some special sections so that you can discover the city at the same time I do. Architecture, food, neighborhoods, museums, foreign language classes, and, maybe even other people!

Take Care and I'll talk to you next week.

Wells

For now, here are some pictures of how I look now (note the long hair) and one from Africa.